About the course

Do you want to learn how to think clearly about important financial decisions and improve your financial literacy? The Finance for Everyone MOOC will showcase the beauty and power of finance. This introductory finance course will be a gateway into the world of finance and will examine multiple applications to apply to your everyday life. Join the course to better understand how to apply frameworks and tools to make smart financial choices.

You will be able to value the impact of different choices available to you: from renting or buying, evaluating car, home and student loans, or deciding whether to go to college versus pursuing a new idea to simply understanding how the financial world works.

Read: Top Universities for Master’s in Business and Finance

Starting with time value of money, the course will help you develop a full appreciation for the many applications of finance. Using real world examples, the course will enable you to understand and analyse many personal and professional decisions we confront on a daily basis. You will understand stocks and bonds, learn to allocate scarce resources in a value-add way, and adopt smart tools for making every day decisions.

Requirements

Finance is simultaneously a way of thinking and a set of tools. Finance is everywhere. There are no prerequisites for this course except for a sense of curiosity and a positive attitude. However, a comfort level with algebra and numbers and an understanding of accounting (the language of business) will clearly help. The course will, however, try to cover everything starting with fundamentals and highlight when there is a need to do some further work in specific subjects.

What you will learn

By the end of this course, you will learn:

  • Why finance is everywhere and how it affects all of us;
  • An understanding of the financial world, and an appreciation for the beauty and power of finance;
  • Gain the fundamental knowledge, skills, and tools of finance and the ability to apply them everywhere, in personal and professional situations;
  • Different frameworks for decision-making;
  • Acquire skills in using different decision-making tools, and learn to make sound personal and professional financial decisions;
  • The concept of Time Value of Money (TVM) and apply related tools and frameworks to everyday decisions.

About the instructor

Gautam Kaul is a Professor of Finance and the Fred M. Taylor Professor of Business at the Ross School of Business (RSB), University of Michigan. Gautam has a Ph.D. from the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago and has published extensively in the top journals in finance on topics covering a wide spectrum. He was awarded the Senior Faculty Research Award for sustained, exceptional, and continuing contributions to scholarly research in the field of business, and noteworthy contributions to building and maintaining a strong research environment at RSB.

Duration: 6 weeks, 5-6 hours per week

Language: English

Instructor: Gautam Kaul

Institution: University of Michigan

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